All posts by Richard Saint Cyr MD

Isn’t it humbling that we have no cure for the world’s most common illness? Yes, the common cold, globally the #1 cause of sick days and doctor visits, still stampedes across the world, blissfully immune to any Eastern or Western prescriptions.… Read the rest

I just turned 49 in March, which was no big deal. But when I realized that I’d turn 50 next year, I suddenly felt an anxious pang of — something. Mortality? Life winding down? Being put out to pasture? Fortunately, it was difficult to brood too long with two toddler boys running me around in circles (literally).… Read the rest

I miss my father. He should be around to be granddad to my wonderful boys, helping me raise them to be good men. But he’s not around, dying far too early, from alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. Only in his mid-60’s, he was a wonderfully warm-hearted man with a deep belly laugh, very much the average-guy Martin Crane to my Frasier Crane-like stuffiness.… Read the rest

I’ve been a family doctor for fifteen years, and one of the more dramatic changes I’ve noticed is a big spike in the incidence of prediabetes and diabetes, in all age groups. I had worked in China for ten years until last summer, and all us family doctors at my Beijing clinic weren’t surprised at all with the 2013 paper published in JAMA confirming the frightening reality in China: more than half of all adults in China now are prediabetic.… Read the rest

This week, March 6 – 13, is National Sleep Awareness Week, so it’s a good time to review healthy sleep habits. I see a lot of adults and teens in my clinic who are chronically tired and have troubles sleeping — both falling asleep and staying asleep.… Read the rest

Did you know that the U.S. Center for Disease Control predicts that one third of all Americans will have diabetes by the year 2050? This scary statistic is not just an American phenomenon; many Western countries’ modernized diets have led to a diabetes epidemic.… Read the rest